Cars are buried as a woman tries to clear her windshield Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

(Newser)
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Here's one great story emerging from the week's brutal blizzard: An alert neighbor and her trusty pair of binoculars saved the life of a 66-year-old Wisconsin man who was buried under snow for four hours, reports AOL News. Joe Latta's ordeal began about 5am when he trudged out his driveway to get the mail but got overwhelmed by the fierce wind and snow. He fell, got quickly covered by drifts, and couldn't get up, which was bad. After about an hour, a plow came along and covered him in packed snow, which was worse.

"That complicated things," Latta tells AOL. He was there about 4 hours—assuming he was a goner all the while—when his neighbor thought she saw something moving in the snow, pulled out her binoculars to double-check, and saw Latta's hand sticking out. When police finally got to him he was "very stiff and not moving," says the official report, but he recovered quickly and was treated and released from the hospital. Click for more.